Story Of a Sales Person, From Targets To Receipts. Is it all about Nos.?

Time to read: 4 minutes

In sales – it’s all about numbers.

The number of calls you make, the number of follow ups you do, the number of meetings you go for, the number of companies you close; the list never ends!

With so much to deal with already, there is one more weight your sales team has to carry – the heaps of expense receipts and reports that pile up at the end of every month due to inefficient process. This adds up to a good number.

Sadly, these are the numbers that no one cares about!

Sales managers are often unaware of the money and time that their team spends on business expenses and the money they lose as they report and claim them.

To show you how much these numbers matter and what do they amount to, we interviewed500+ Sales Professionals. Our objective wasto understand the struggles they face with receipts and expense reports.

The survey is quite an eye opener for sales managers(here is a link of how the survey looks). In case you want to implement the survey in your team then we can help you, just enter your email address(here) and we will do the rest on your behalf.

Details please!

According to our research on an average, a sales rep spends 1/5th of his fixed pay in the process to achieve targets, which means that 20% of the salary is rotational .

This money is typically spent on air tickets, hotel accommodation, meals, mobile bills, taxi fares, etc. as your team sets out every single day to meet their numbers .

Surprisingly, the sales reps don’t mind spending this or more amount from their own pocket.

Pranjal, from LVG Insurance says, “I don’t mind the expense, sometimes I spend over Rs.500 just to meet the prospect.”

“The cost of losing the prospect is way more than the money I spend in the process to convert him.”

Conclusion 1:A part of the sales reps’ salary is dependent not on their core skills of closing deals, but on their discipline of saving bills. This amount which remains due for reimbursement also acts as a variable component.

This revelation made us delve deeper into the problem.

If the money spent on doing sales is so high, could this be a conscious reason to drop a lead?

Surprisingly, NOT! More than 80% of the respondants said they would not forego a meeting just because it was too costly on their pockets.

This is a proof of their rock solid commitment to work since expenses didn’t even matter when it came to sales.

It demonstrates that yoursales team is highly invested in their work. They will leave no stone unturned to make the deal happen.

But this also doesn’t mean that they don’t get de-motivated because of heavy expenses.

“Our headoffice is in Kolkata so reports have to reach there from Bangalore before the 3rd of every month. We do it because we have to, after all, it is our money.“

Pranjal from LVG insurance says, “If I don’t submit my bills on time then my salary for the next month gets affected. Our headoffice is in Kolkata so reports have to reach there from Bangalore before the 3rd of every month.”

Deepak, a senior sales person from Genworks says, “I have lost a lot of money in the past, and managing bills was an unwanted responsibility.”

Harish from Capricoast says “he loses Rs 800 to Rs 1000 every month due to misplaced/uncollected bills, while Sunil from the same company says,“I have lost over Rs. 25,000 in the last 6 months. “

So we went prodding if there were any more losses which have been accepted as a part of the process.

We discovered that on an average a sales executive loses 5%-10% of his salary due to mismanagement of bills.

Conclusion 2: It is a common practice to lose bills and consequently forfeit the money. Losing one’s own money has been accepted as a part of the process.

The problem is not the money spent but how much of it are they able to claim back and recover.

It is only fair for business heads to eliminate such losses for their prime bread earners.

To Summarize…

These two issues have always existed and team leaders have known about them in the back of their heads but most have not taken any action due to lack of proof/motivation.

We helped a couple of ‘not-so-sure’ prospects to implement the survey and the results helped them to take a call.

For a start, we request you to float this survey within your sales team and see how much time-money it is losing. (We can do that on your behalf, just click on this link and we will reach out to execute it for you )

Details please!

Your sales managers have become jugglers to survive, here is an e-book which highlights on how to bring their focus back on their core job: to get some revenue!

Happay is an expense management solution which automates the complete re-imbursement process from end to end.

Please let us know if you want any consultation on improving your expense management and reimbursement process, we are there to help, it is free.

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“The cost of losing the prospect is way more than the money I spend in the process to convert him.“